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HITLER'S LIST
A Lesson on German Art

by Michael McKeon

 

On September 20, 2006, the Rutgers community was treated to a lecture of unusually broad appeal by Professor Gregory Maertz of the Department of English at St. John’s University. Professor Maertz’s topic was “Hitler’s List and the Real Canon of Nazi Art.” Delivered in the stunning surrounds of the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, the lecture chronicled Professor Maertz’s recent discovery of a hitherto unknown cache of paintings at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. The significance of these paintings, represented by an ample and fascinating selection of slides taken on site by Maertz, is that they transform our understanding of the range of art produced under the Third Reich. Long associated only with a narrowly realist and nationalist purpose, Nazi art is now known, thanks to Maertz’s work, to have been ambitiously engaged in the modernist experiments to which the rest of Europe was committed during the first half of the twentieth century.

Professor Maertz began by describing the complex relationship that developed over the course of the 1930s between Adolf Hitler and his functionaries, the ideologies of Nazi culture, and the fostering of German art, a relationship deeply embedded in and resonant with the rise of the Third Reich. He then recounted the detective work that led to his discovery: how he first came to suspect the existence of this “secret” cache, his discreet and diplomatic efforts to gain access to the Haus der Kunst, and the hours spent photographing paintings under makeshift conditions and persistent uncertainty that his work would be authorized by museum and government officials (it was).

The heart of the lecture was Maertz’s ingenious display of and commentary on the paintings themselves. This included an informal mini-course on modernist art, subtly interwoven with comparisons between examples of the conventional canon of Nazi art and selected works, often radically different in style and theme, from the Haus der Kunst collection. The audience was invited to engage directly in thinking about the comparison between the two bodies of work when Professor Maertz asked periodically for a vote on which of two slides, displayed side by side, derived from which of the two collections

The vast appeal of the lecture was evident in the fact that it was sponsored not only by the English department, but also by the art history, German, comparative literature, and history departments, as well as by the Center for European Studies and the School of Arts and Sciences. The questions that followed the lecture also reflected the range of subjects and fields Maertz’s research illuminated. After the question-and-answer period Professor Maertz circulated among audience members as they, and he, partook of the sumptuous spread that we at Rutgers have become accustomed to enjoying in conjunction with intellectual nourishment of the sort provided by “Hitler’s List and the Real Canon of Nazi Art.”

© 2007 Future Traditions Magazine
A Publication for Alumni and Friends of Rutgers English
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Department of English | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.